,
"and if it won't incommode you I will stay. Should you not care to
talk, please read on: I shall not mind. And won't you light another
cigar? I have no objection to cigars in the open air, though I think
them disgusting in the house."

"Thank you," I said as she sat down and I took another Havana for the
one I had thrown away at her arrival. "Will you relate to me the
manner of your discovery? I would rather not read."

"About two weeks ago," she began, looking over the landscape, and not
at me, "I was sitting in the arbor below, and I heard Mrs.--well, a
lady coming whom, to be sincere with you, I dislike. If I stayed, I
knew she would have a long talk with me: if I walked on, she might
call me back. I looked about in haste for a hiding-place. The bushes
near me appeared as if I might get behind them: I pushed through, saw
a little path, which I followed, turned round the base of a hillock,
and found two rocks, upon which I raised myself with the help of a
sapling. Then, carefully parting the branches, I saw this," waving her
small hand that I might see it, but still not looking at me. "The sun
was just setting; away down in yonder field the sorrel was as fire in
its rays; a catbird was reciting a merry pastoral in the thicket
beyond; two goats stood high on a bank, like satyrs guarding the
place. You see why I come again."

"I have the right of discovery," I cried gayly: "I made the path and
placed the rocks. I claim it, that I may lay it at your feet."

"Do you like it?" she asked, turning to me and laying a slight stress
on "you."

"I told you I admired pretty things, and you know, Miss Blanche, I am
a bit of a poet."

She smiled: "Ah yes; but do you really admire this?"

"Of course I do--think it dem foine."

She laughed outright--a laugh so gay that I joined her, though I could
not tell why. "As for sorrel," I added, "you ought to see The
Beauties: the fields are full of it, though the farmers don't seem to
admire it much."

"Well, I am very fond of the sorrel," she replied, "with the
clover-tops, the seed-globes of dandelion and the daisies by the
water: it makes quite a bouquet in yonder field."

I looked at her to see if she was chaffing me: not at all--she was
sober as a judge.

"Dem foine! I beg pardon, very nice indeed. How would you like to
carry it to the ball this evening?"

"I never take anything to a ball that I care to have appreciated," she
answered dryly.

"Aw! That is the reason